Arcatao Journal; Rebel Villages Weary of War, but Wary of Peace

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At first, Arcatao seemed empty or asleep, a setting waiting for the characters in a tropical novel to be introduced.

Then signs of life became evident: women baking bread in the dark interior of an adobe building, four women at sewing machines in another, and in a corner of the plaza a horse tethered to a post with men and boys gathered around.

The crowd's nervous anticipation as one of its number stepped forward to inoculate the jittery horse seemed suggestive of the uncertainty facing Arcatao and other isolated villages in guerrilla territory as peace comes to El Salvador.

With the cease-fire officially scheduled for Feb. 1 and the guns virtually silent already, people here are beginning to think about the possibility of the return of central Government authority -- and to resent it. Promises Must Be Kept

A few miles down the road, in San Jose las Flores, Manuel Cartagena said that the Government could not "impose its structures" as he sat around an oil-cloth-covered table with village leaders.

"If the Government wants to send us some medicines, that's fine," he said, "but they have to be given to our clinics, which we will continue to run."

"The Government, if it installs a school, will want to substitute its ideology for the one for which we've been fighting for 12 years," he continued. "So, until all the promises in the peace accords are kept, we will keep our organizations."

The peace pact, signed in Mexico City on Jan. 16, includes a broad range of political, military and social and economic commitments. One of the more complicated is the Government promise to create a land bank to provide land to people in this area who may now be illegally occupying land owned by people who fled into army-controlled areas years ago out of fear of the guerrillas.

Mr. Cartagena, a regional leader of an organization that helped sympathizers and families of the leftist guerrillas resettle these villages in Chalatenango Department after having fled into the mountains to escape the army, nudged the village leaders to a more critical stance when they began to express expectations that peace would bring more freedom and job opportunities.

As his remarks made clear, leaders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front plan to turn places like Arcatao and San Jose las Flores, until now the rear guard of the guerrilla war, into political launching pads for rebel chieftains, who have spent most of the war years in Managua, Havana or Mexico and now plan to seek a share of power in the next elections, in 1994.

A short distance from where Mr. Cartagena and the village leaders sat, an armed guerrilla in camouflage uniform chatted with a man on horseback. Several other guerrillas leaned out of the windows of a building near the entrance to the plaza.

But as much as or more than they fear the Government's arrival, people in this area are worried about losing the financial and emotional support of foreign sympathizers who have aided their bare-bones subsistence through years of war.

In the only public dining room in San Jose las Flores, where the menu on a recent day was chicken and rice with warm Coke or Fanta, villagers have painted a colorful mural that shows some of the importance foreigners have come to assume in the survival of these communities.

It depicts brown-skinned local people sharing a meal with fair-haired internationalists, as people who have come from abroad to help the cause, either by fighting alongside the guerrillas or by providing medicine and other aid to noncombatants in the region of guerrilla influence, are known. At the end of the table in the mural, filming it all, is a foreign television crew.

To the west, in the small city of Chalatenango, the departmental capital, Bishop Eduardo Alas Alfaro said he feared that with the end of the war, "American aid will end and we'll still be poor."

Bishop Alas, who straddles a delicate line, with part of his flock in guerrilla territory and part in army territory, voiced his concerns to a group of visitors from Oxfam America, a private relief organization that has worked in community development in El Salvador for a decade.

The Bishop's concern was shared by the group from Oxfam, which has invested $1.2 million in small aid programs in El Salvador over the last decade. Most have been in guerrilla-dominated areas or in the slums of San Salvador, the capital.

Later, as he walked the dusty plaza of Arcatao, from the tiny tailor shop to the bakery to the chicken coop and the shady spot where women embroidered aprons to sell, John C. Hammock, the Oxfam director, said he was here in search of inspiration for how to keep up American interest in El Salvador now that the war is over.

"Our concern has always been to reach the bases, so people can get control of their lives,' he said. "Now, with the end of the war, we are afraid that people in the United States and elsewhere will think everything is solved and move onto other issues."

"The fact is, now is truly the time to get involved," he continued. "We need long-term involvement if poor people are going to change their lives."

A version of this article appears in print on January 29, 1992, on Page A00004 of the National edition with the headline: Arcatao Journal; Rebel Villages Weary of War, but Wary of Peace. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe